This paper discusses the intertwining of the obligations among close friends and kin and the firms of market sellers in Monrovia, Liberia. The literature on entrepreneurship in Africa in many respects has been a debate on the relation between kinship obligations and the relative success of entrepreneurs. Based on data gathered during the early 1950s (e.g. Bauer, 1963: 7–8; Dorjahn, 1962), a consensus of sorts was reached by the early 1960s (e.g. Hunter, 1962: 140) holding that kinship obligations were either drains on the capital of entrepreneurs or hindered capital accumulation. At worst, such obligations were regarded as the primary cause of business failure among African entrepreneurs. At best, they were considered to be the main reason for the lack of growth in firms run by African entrepreneurs. Data gathered since the mid 1960s, however, have run counter to these earlier assessments. Rather than suggesting that kinship obligations were threats to entrepreneurs, these studies (e.g. Isaac, 1969,1971; Jones, 1969; Nafziger, 1969) made the points that such obligations had little to do with business failure, and, especially in the early stages of growth (cf. Benedict, 1968), were often critical to the success achieved by an entrepreneur. In making these points, however, relatively little attention has been paid to explaining why kinship and equivalent obligations are, on balance, beneficial for the entrepreneurs investigated. In over-all agreement with these recent studies, the data from Monrovia illustrate procedures through which entrepreneurs achieve the balance between demands and assistance determining the role—beneficial or detrimental—kinship and equivalent obligations play in their businesses.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the educational needs of one small community in Kenya in terms of its changing socio-economic patterns, and to show how attitudes towards the school system have their roots within this setting. The data are drawn from a nineteen-month study in South Maragoli Location of Kakamega District, Western Province. As part of a larger study concerning the effects of labour migration upon agricultural enterprise, a tracer project was conducted on 139 Standard VII leavers from three primary schools, situated within a one-mile radius, to learn the leaver's employment expectations, his family background, the network connections by which he enters into the labour market, and finally the way in which the community interprets and manipulates the school system to suit its particular needs. The statistical data presented have so far emerged from the school study and from a larger sub-location sample of 159 households. While several questionnaires, intended as cross-checks were administered to students and parents, the qualitative material results from an intensive study utilizing anthropological field techniques in the schools' constituent villages.

In 1961 Marvin Miracle attempted to demonstrate that reports of ‘seasonal hunger’ in tropical Africa were to be discounted and that in fact regular ‘hunger periods’ did not occur. He based his argument on a definition of seasonal hunger which took into account only the calories people consumed. By his definition, ‘seasonal hunger’ can exist only if people consume fewer calories than they need in certain months of each year even though their total calorie intake over the year is adequate (Miracle, 1961: 277–88). He denied that there was sufficient evidence of any such shortfall to justify the F.A.O. statement (1958) that ‘pre-harvest food shortage is still a problem in many of the drier parts (of tropical Africa)’.

This study sets out to explain the relatively high incidence of Islamic affiliation among traditionally non-Islamic Sisala migrants living in the migrant community of Mamobi in Accra, Ghana. In the course of the presentation, I intend to demonstrate that the migrants' relationship to Islam and the urban Islamic community is directly related to insecurities resulting from leaving one's native area and confronting an alien and often dangerous, urban environment, and that Islam provides the migrant with the instrumental means by which to facilitate his adjustment to urban life.